Certain aspects of the present disclosure generally relate to wireless communications and, more particularly, to methods and apparatus for rate-matching control channels using polar codes. An exemplary method generally includes encoding a stream of bits using a polar code, determining a size of a circular buffer for storing the encoded stream of bits based, at least in part, on a minimum supported code rate and a control information size, and performing rate-matching on stored encoded stream of bits based, at least in part, on a mother code size, N, and a number of coded bits for transmission, E.

Various aspects of the present disclosure generally relate to wireless communication. In some aspects, a wireless communication device may determine to block puncture or to block shorten a set of transmitted bits of an adjusted fractally enhanced kernel polar code for a communication of an incremental redundancy (IR)-hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) process based at least in part on a code rate associated with the communication of the IR-HARQ process. The wireless communication device may generate the adjusted fractally enhanced kernel polar code for the communication based at least in part on determining to block puncture or to block shorten the set of transmitted bits. The wireless communication device may transmit the communication using the adjusted fractally enhanced kernel polar code. Numerous other aspects are provided.

A method in a node (110, 115) comprises generating (604) a plurality of constituent polar codes, each of the plurality of constituent polar codes having an associated block length and an associated set of information bits. The method comprises coupling (608) at least a portion of the sets of information bits associated with each of the plurality of constituent polar codes to generate a spatially coupled polar code. The method comprises encoding (612) a wireless transmission using the spatially coupled polar code.